Ask the Right Questions
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Confession time! How often have you heard someone say, or deity save you, you said yourself, “what camera did you use? What lens did you use? What were your exposure settings?”
While these questions may be interesting from a curiosity perspective, the answers add negligible value to improving your craft. Want to become a better photographer? Ask better questions.
Questions about gear are almost entirely irrelevant. Just as a chisel does not make a sculpture, gear does not make a photograph. Knowing the exposure settings for a single image is irrelevant because you will never be in the same place with the same light and the same subject. There are people on the Internet who suggest that this is good starting point information. It is not. That statement is bullshit. Make your own images based on what you see, not what someone else did once upon a time.
So what are the right questions? Here are a few to get you started.
What goal were you trying to achieve with this image? Were you successful? What did you learn from this effort?
What did you see that gave you a reason to squeeze the shutter? Did you manage to record what you saw? What might you try differently the next time?
How were you feeling when you made this image? What was your mood? What was going through your head?
What encouraged you at the time to make the exposure decisions that you made? Did you make any decision at all, or just go with what the camera proposed? (yes I do know that choosing not to decide is still a choice - but a massively lazy choice)
Looking at the image after the fact, do you still get the emotion that you sought to get when you made the image? If not, what might you do differently next time?
When did you process your image? Did you do it right after the shooting while your feelings were still the same, or did you wait some period of time? Why did you choose this route?
These questions are very useful because they help you as the viewer and the photographer as a creative get to the root of the squeeze. Sometimes you cannot get to the photographer to ask these questions, but most who post on the web will be more than happy to tell you, if you can get them off the topic of gear, their presets that they have for sale, or the endless story of their personal greatness. Am I cynical about a lot of this? Yes I am because I have lots of evidentiary reasons to be so. You choose your level of caution and I will choose my own.
If you do look to the web for inspiration, consider those who have very small, highly curated libraries. More than one image posted of the same thing is indicative of a lack of focus or a surfeit of egotism.
Retrospectives of a passed photographer will be different of course, because the photographer is not doing the curating, so we have no idea of the photographer’s will other than what we or the curator interprets. So asking what Vivian Maier’s intent was is pointless. She never showed or discussed her images, so any answer you get is pure speculation and worth about that much, meaning zero. That does not mean that you cannot look at the images and draw your own conclusions, just don’t assume that your conclusions are the same as the creator’s.
You should be asking yourself the same questions. If you are not, you will have a library of zillions of images that have no meaning and no relevance and you will be lying to yourself as an artist. Michelangelo did not keep a room full of his failures. No reason for you to do so either. Yes I have heard that we can look back and learn from them, but in truth how many of us ever look back at images we made six months ago, let alone two years ago. An image buried on digital storage and never reviewed is dead.
Lastly treat yourself with respect and dump the use of jargon. Calling an image a “capture” is a giant flashing sign that you want to fit in with a bunch of other urban trendies. It’s the hallmark of amateur night because it presumes no intent or engagement on your part, akin to the effectiveness of a mousetrap.
Do you have an idea for an article, tutorial, video or podcast? Do you have an imaging question unrelated to this article? Send me an email directly at ross@thephotovideoguy.ca or post in the comments. When you email your questions on any imaging topic, I will try to respond within a day.
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I'm Ross Chevalier, thanks for reading, watching and listening and until next time, peace.
